Wick

Bridge Street in Wick

Wick, which was for nearly 500 years the administrative centre of
Caithness, lies on the east
coast of northern Scotland, some 15 miles south of
Duncansby Head. The
name comes from the Norse Vik, meaning bay, and it
was the Vikings who first used the mouth of the Wick River where it flows into
Wick Bay as a harbour for their longships and trading vessels.

Wick today still has the feel of a town that revolves around its
harbour and its seafaring traditions, almost like an
Aberdeen in miniature. The
irony is that for much of its life, most of Wick's trade and fishing took place
via the tiny hamlets of Papigoe and Staxigoe and their better sheltered but
much smaller harbours just along the coast to the north east.

This started to change when Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster built a
quay at Wick in 1768 in order to promote the town as a centre for herring
fishing. Progress was very slow and in 1780 under 400 barrels of salted fish
were caught and processed.

But the British Fisheries Society stepped in during the 1780s and
within a decade 200 fishing boats were based in Wick and the annual catch had
increased to 13,000 barrels of salted herring.

Harbour improvements by
Thomas Telford followed in
1810. He also bridged the River Wick, improving the connections between Wick on
the north bank and the new town, Pulteneytown, he designed for Sir William
Pulteney to accommodate the fast growing population, on the south bank.

An additional pier followed in 1831, though the following year
there was a setback when an outbreak of cholera in Wick led many fishermen to
move to Peterhead. Despite
this the fishing industry in Wick continued to thrive, making it for a time the
busiest fishing port in Britain. In the 1860s there were 1100 herring boats
operating out of the harbour and they were supported by no fewer than 650
coopers in the town. Most activity took place during a 12 week period in the
summer when the vast shoals of herring were passing around the
Caithness coast. During
this time the town's normal population of 6,000 increased to 15,000 as migrant
workers, many from the western and northern isles, flocked in to help process
and pack the fish, mend nets, and provide all the other services demanded by
such a high level of economic activity. At the height of the season the town's
47 inns were between them selling 800 gallons of whisky each week. To put all
this in perspective, Wick's total population today is around 8,000.

Failure to take steps to conserve stocks meant that the herring was
in steep decline by the 1930s, by which time fewer than 30 fishing boats
remained in Wick, mostly catching white fish. This figure has remained roughly
constant since: although several hundred small fishing boats based along the
Caithness coast and beyond
still carry the "WK" Wick
fishing
registration code letters.

From the 1970s the gap left in the local economy since the
departure of the herring was partially filled by the discovery of North Sea
Oil. Wick has since been used as convenient base for offshore supply vessels.
The traffic this generated has also helped the development of Wick Airport,
using a Second World War airfield on the low plateau immediately to the north
of the town.

Today's Wick is an interesting mix of influences and elements. The
harbour remains both active and interesting, while the town centre has
considerable character without being either fossilised or run down. In
Pulteneytown you find the Wick Heritage
Museum, giving visitors a feel for the town's past and, in particular, its
herring years. Nearby is another important visitor attraction,
Pulteney Distillery.

For collectors of extremes, another site of interest is just to the
south of the bridge which carries Bridge Street and the A9 over the River Wick.
Here you can find Mackays Hotel, a wedge shaped building which reaches its
narrowest point nearest the bridge. This end of the building stretches the full
length of Ebenezer Place, which appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the
world's shortest street at 2.06m or 6ft 9in in length.